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All projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by volunteers using the MediaWiki software. All contributions are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (except in Wikinews, which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5). This means their content may be freely used, freely edited, freely copied and freely redistributed subject to the restrictions of that license.
All projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by volunteers using the MediaWiki software. All contributions are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (except in Wikinews, which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5). This means their content may be freely used, freely edited, freely copied and freely redistributed subject to the restrictions of that license.

[[Category: English]]

Revision as of 17:29, 25 September 2007

On September 9, 2007, at 8:21 UTC, the English-language Wikipedia published its two millionth article with the entry "El Hormiguero," about the popular Spanish TV show of the same name. The article was created by registered Wikipedia contributor Zzxc.

This is yet another important symbolic milestone in the evolution of Wikipedia, the world's largest and most up-to-date encyclopedia. Currently, the collaboratively-written website is available in 250 languages, with English, German and French being the largest. Combined, Wikipedia has over eight million articles.

"In just six years, Wikipedia has grown from a mere idea, to being the largest encyclopedia in the world. This success is thanks to the thousands of volunteers worldwide who have shaped Wikipedia into what it is today - a gift of knowledge to the world, and to future generations," said Florence Devouard, Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.

Wikipedia articles are living drafts that are continually being updated and improved-upon. The encyclopedia is constantly improving: a 2007 study conducted by the Hewlett Packard Information Dynamics Laboratory found that the best articles on Wikipedia are those that have been edited the most frequently, by the largest number of people. It concluded that the correlation between article quality and the number of edits validates Wikipedia as a successful collaborative effort.

Wikipedia has also developed into the largest single online source for material in several smaller languages, such as Swahili and Esperanto, and is starting to gain momentum in African languages, such as Afrikaans, Sesotho, Swati, Setswana, Venda, Xhosa, and Zulu.

Wikipedia is one of numerous free content projects facilitated and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, with the goal of empowering world citizens to share in the sum of all human knowledge. Wikipedia is the Foundation's most popular project, and is utilized in numerous educational programs throughout the developing world.


About Wikipedia

The goal of the Wikipedia project is to create free encyclopedias in all languages of the world. Anyone with Internet access is free to contribute by writing new articles and editing existing articles.

Wikipedia started in January 2001, and currently offers more than eight million articles in 250 languages. The largest Wikipedia is in English, with more than two million articles; it's followed by the German and French editions, each of which contain more than half a million articles. Nine other language editions contain 100,000+ articles, and more than 100 other languages contain 1,000+ articles. Every month, new language editions launch.

Wikipedia is entirely created and maintained by a community of active volunteers. In 2004, Wikipedia won the Webby Award for "Community" and the Prix Ars Electronica's Golden Nica for "Digital Communities." Since the start of the project, more than 100,000 registered users have made at least ten edits each, and more than 3.4 million people have created accounts on the English Wikipedia alone.

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. It operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's 10 most-visited websites. The Foundation was created in 2003 by Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia.

Today, the Wikimedia Foundation operates the following projects:

Wikipedia, a project to build free encyclopedias in all languages of the world. Wiktionary, a project to create free content dictionaries and thesauri in every language. Wikiquote, a repository of quotations taken from famous people, books, speeches, films or any intellectually interesting materials. Wikibooks, which aims to build a collection of free e-book resources, including textbooks, language courses, manuals, and annotated public domain books. Wikisource, a collection of classic books, laws, and other free works. Wikispecies , a central, extensive species database for taxonomy. Wikinews, with the mission to report the news on a wide variety of subjects. Wikiversity, a project dedicated to learning materials and learning communities. Wikimedia Commons, a central repository for free video, images, music, spoken texts, and other free media that can be easily reused by all Wikimedia projects.

All projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by volunteers using the MediaWiki software. All contributions are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (except in Wikinews, which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5). This means their content may be freely used, freely edited, freely copied and freely redistributed subject to the restrictions of that license.